Post #1887127

2026-05-02 09:36 UTC

We live in a moment of highly subsidized #AI. Even expensive subscriptions generate significant losses for the providers. Many people think this will lead to a collapse of the industry once the inflow of speculative capital stops. I think something else will happen. The costs for powerful models will rise significantly, to the point where they are available primarily to corporate users. Most others will be left with cheap models, which are more of a distraction than an actual tool. This will contribute to even greater social inequality, far from any claims of "democratizing" whatever.

Replies (5)

@frumble@chaos.social 2026-05-02 10:58

@festal Maybe, but according to this, 'frontier' models are just a year ahead of the freeware models. Might change but it seems totally possible some firms will invest in competitive training the road ahead even when the VC bubble finally bursts. https://chaos.social/@frumble/116484941291574137

Open ##1902109
@DrSeltsam@digitalcourage.social 2026-05-02 11:54

@festal good programmers are also only available to corporate clients

Open ##1902111
@lalonsander@chaos.social 2026-05-02 15:53

@festal I think, on the contrary, LLMs are an area in which advanced tech has been available to the public at the same time as or even before it was available to, for example, the military. There are already providers offering low cost inference for quite advanced open source models. Those, quite certainly, are not being subsidized. I also doubt newer models are/will be significantly more powerful. A lot of power of current LLMs comes from the software built around the AI inference.

Open ##1902113
@d1@autistics.life 2026-05-03 18:48

@festal I totally agree - any LLM which is even a notch or two less than the best is effectively worthless.

Open ##1964548
@alienocene@mastodon.social 2026-05-04 06:04

@festal But how, then, would this help transform / improve a degraded informational milieu and prevent the cognitive collapse of AI? For expensive models would still face the shitty products of cheap AI. This brings a “Maxwell’s demon”-type problem...

Open ##1964549